All That's Left Unsaid Quotes

“Ky laughed, felt the tingling warmth that bloomed within her whenever she talked to someone for whom she didn't need to fill in the blanks - someone who understood that the act of complaining about her parents was not an invitation to troubleshoot her problems, because there was no solving the problem of refugee parents; someone who could commiserate without casting judgment; someone who accepted the contradiction of the things that annoyed her most about her family being the same things that signaled to her that they cared.”
― Tracey Lien, All That's Left Unsaid

“Ky didn't allow her mother to have feelings, because to grant her those would mean acknowledging that she was a person who had desires and dreams beyond what Ky saw. It was easier to imagine her as a caricature, as an immigrant Cabramatta parent, whose only desire was for her children to become doctors and lawyers (or ideally both) whose only means of expressing love to them was through cooking their meals, washing their clothes, and criticizing them into being better people. And despite wanting more from her mother, despite wanting the expression of love that came with warmth and acceptance, despite wanting her mother to actually know who she was, Ky had convinced herself that it was beyond her mother's capabilities, that people from the old country simply didn't do things that way. They'd give their life for you, but good luck getting them to see you.”
― Tracey Lien, All That's Left Unsaid

“How do you sum up a life? How do you capture who a person was, what they meant to you, and who they could have been?”
― Tracey Lien, All That's Left Unsaid

“Now that she was twenty-two, the words were there in her head, jumbled. The feeling was still too hot to approach but was slowly beginning to make sense. If she would just give herself the time and space to think about it, to examine the thing she’d spent her whole life avoiding, she would realize that what she wanted to say to her mother was that she was the one who had no idea—no idea how badly Ky and people like Ky needed a break. No idea how speaking perfect English and having an office job and being born in Australia didn’t mean what any of them thought it would mean. No idea how hard it was to walk the narrow path where everyone expected her to be quiet and smart and hardworking and good—a narrow path not even laid out by her or people like her. No idea how it felt to suffer the slow death of a thousand cuts: from the things people said, from the way people looked at her. The looks she got when she knocked on doors, walked into a room, boarded a flight; the way they saw her skin before they saw her, wanted her to shut up and be grateful, expected her to take a joke when she was the joke. The way she was expected to feel lucky, so lucky, like her life was abundant and full, when all she felt was depleted and diminished. It made her feel crazy to be called lucky, and her mother had no idea.”
― Tracey Lien, All That's Left Unsaid

“Was it worse to feel alone because you've been abandoned, or to be in the presence of a friend and still feel alone?
- Ky Tran”
― Tracey Lien, All That's Left Unsaid

“Just because we're not perfect doesn't mean we're bad.
- Eddie”
― Tracey Lien, All That's Left Unsaid

“Everyone changes, whether they like it or not.
- Denny”
― Tracey Lien, All That's Left Unsaid

“Everyone plays dumb or is dumb. I don't know which is worse.
- Constable Edwards”
― Tracey Lien, All That's Left Unsaid

“Wenn sie noch beste Freundinnen gewesen wären, hätte Ky Minnie gestanden, was für sie das Beste an ihrem Job war, nämlich den Leuten sagen zu können, dass sie Journalistin war, aber dass sie die Arbeit selbst als eine anstrengende emotionale Achterbahnfahrt empfand und nicht wusste, ob sich die Mühe lohnte. Musste man jeden Morgen mit Angstgefühlen aufwachen? Musste man bei dem Gedanken, wildfremde Leute anzurufen, in Schweiß ausbrechen? Weil das der Preis dafür war, sich wichtig fühlen zu können?”
― Tracey Lien, All That's Left Unsaid

“The weather’s beautiful and there’s so much land and look at our beaches and everyone can get a decent-paying job and we’re so lucky to have all of that, right? We should be so grateful to be here. But they don’t tell us that the luck doesn’t extend to us. That’s the big lie. They’ve been shoving it down our throats since we were kids. You’re a fool if you believe it. Not only are they not gonna look out for us, they’re gonna turn on us the moment they think we’re a threat.”
― Tracey Lien, All That's Left Unsaid

“But Ky understood. She hated how well she now understood. After all, hadn’t she kept every hurt she’d ever experienced from her own parents? Hadn’t she hidden the bullying, the name-calling, the cruel acts of strangers, the times she’d been told to go back to where she came from, the ching-chongs, the pulled-back eyelids, the blondies with the Cabbage Patch Kids, the way she was forced to play the monster, the way she was asked why she couldn’t just take a joke, the times she was told that Asian women were ugly, kinky, docile, crazy, nerdy, unworthy, the way she was dismissed by men, the way she was dismissed by white men, their comments about what Asian women were and weren’t, what Asian women could or couldn’t be, the way she smiled with her tongue pressed against her teeth even as an ache beat in tandem with her heart—hadn’t she hidden all of that? And hadn’t she lived her own ambitious, exciting, anxious, uncompromising life while knowing that she could never, ever, ever, ever tell her parents about what she had been through? Because knowing would break their hearts. Because she had to help them believe that their sacrifices had paid off. Because she had to help them believe that moving to a country where they didn’t speak the language and weren’t seen as individuals had been worth it. Because she had to convince them that they’d done right by their children, that no one had failed, that no one had been let down, that they were one of the lucky ones who’d followed the path and found success. It made perfect sense. You lied to protect. You lied because of love.”
― Tracey Lien, All That's Left Unsaid